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[melkiades]

Hi there,

Since I have a gigantic music collection that's almost entirely tagged using various tools and the great JRiver Media Center, I decided to start a new and fun business: offer playlists to Restaurants adapted to their style and clientele.  I select Electronica/Lounge/French/Arabic/World/African/Downtempo/Uptempo-Downtempo/etc. and I try to play music that's recent and/or not mainstream.

The project on paper is great and a few restaurant owners have shown interest.  One of them is a very big restaurant here in Montreal and they asked me the following:

- 112 hours of music with no track repeated on a given day and no more than 4 reuses of the same track in a given week
- normalized music (for this, I use the great MP3 Gain software; even though I saw that Media Center can normalize music levels, I'm not sure I trust it - could it crash applying the normalization algorithm in real-time?)

Here are a few questions for you guys:

- I'll create the first week (112 hours) and will go onsite with the selected tracks and will install Media Center

- my collection is huge and I need to be able to bring only the tracks that are on the playlists.  Since my playlists refer to e:\mp3\etc I won't be able to replicate that structure on their hard disk.  Do you have a suggestion for this problem?  I'd like to avoid having to create m3u files, rename the paths, then reimport the m3u's in Media Center..

- once a month, I will connect remotely on their machine and upload 10 new albums.  Is there any way I could automate the process of zipping from my machine only the files I need each month?

Thank you
AA

[rpalmer68]

Silly question, but isn't the music copyright? 

Wouldn't the restaurants each have to purchase their own albums/tracks?  Or is there some licensing system to cover this?

 

[Alex B]

Silly question, but isn't the music copyright? 

Wouldn't the restaurants each have to purchase their own albums/tracks?  Or is there some licensing system to cover this?

A few years ago a friend who owns a restaurant here in Finland explained their system to me. At that time they got custom compilations from a service provider on Sony Mini Discs. Naturally the service provider had an agreement with the local copyright authority and the restaurant had to pay a licensing fee in addition to the service fee. I'd guess similar arrangements are common in most countries including Canada.

I suppose the type of the delivery media is irrelevant and the copyright authority is only interested in the details of the public playback. In addition, naturally the service provider must have obtained the source music legally in a way or another.

JRiver would probably be interested in selling MC licenses to the restaurants.

- normalized music (for this, I use the great MP3 Gain software; even though I saw that Media Center can normalize music levels, I'm not sure I trust it - could it crash applying the normalization algorithm in real-time?)

MC's Replay Gain does not cause any problems during playback. It is just a simple volume adjustment that is done once on each track change.

- my collection is huge and I need to be able to bring only the tracks that are on the playlists.  Since my playlists refer to e:\mp3\etc I won't be able to replicate that structure on their hard disk.  Do you have a suggestion for this problem?  I'd like to avoid having to create m3u files, rename the paths, then reimport the m3u's in Media Center...

- once a month, I will connect remotely on their machine and upload 10 new albums.  Is there any way I could automate the process of zipping from my machine only the files I need each month?

You can create a custom Handheld for each client (point it to a folder). When you sync playlists MC copies the audio files and replicates the playlists on the Handheld.

[melkiades]

Guys I'm sorry.  I did register to be informed when someone replies but never got those email notifications.

About music copyrights: I'm totally against the RIAA.  They're a bunch of fascists.  Music should be free.  Artists have never made a penny selling their albums, only the major corporations have done so.   Do your research, read, look on the net for proponents of other methods than the one offered by fascist RIAA.  It was recently proved in Canada that file sharing had a POSITIVE impact on sales.  This is a government research and I can send you the links to it if you are interested in learning more.  Having hundreds of people listen to new music in a restaurant, music that is not commercial and that is not played on a regular basis on TV and radio will broaden those artists' audience.  I know by experience that people ask who is playing and most people who ask will end up buying those albums or tracks online.  The RIAA is a futile organization.

To prove my point there is an armada of artists and labels offering their music for free on the web.  One example is www.epsilon-lab.com with the great Eloļ Brunelle.  Their artists rock and they offer their album freely, because they know it will give them a bigger exposer and that in the long run, it will be profitable.

MC licences will, of course, be sold to the restaurant.

Thank you for the other advices and sorry for having trolled the subject of my own post

Cheers,
Melkiades

[wombat66]

...  Artists have never made a penny selling their albums, only the major corporations have done so. 

FAIL!

[melkiades]

OK, let me rephrase then:

"... Most artists (I'd say the ratio is well above 90%) have never made much selling their albums, only the major corporations have done so."

I stand firmly by this point.  Most NEW artists have everything to gain of getting known by distributing their music freely.  And many artists and labels start to recognize this.  To make a comparison with the software world - this is actually how Bill Gates gained 99% of market share with his MS Office suite, by making sure it was extremely easy to copy and by distributing it freely accross university campuses accross the planet.  Getting in your public's hands before others is the most important goal here, and the means you take to reach that goal is irrelevant.  Once you have gained popularity, then you can monetize it.

FAIL!

[Gazelle]

I agree with melkiades, his little business is a big help to promote new music of new singers. But let me remind you that they are still under the law to avoid piracy. It is true that restaurants with good background music are comfortable, but still they have to use legitimate records. True Refrigeration